Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer : The Internet Lecture 9: Web Services II David O’Hallaron School of Computer Science and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Institute for eCommerce, Summer 1999

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Today’s lecture Dynamic content background (35 min) Break (10 min) Serving dynamic content with GET and POST (40 min)

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer How programs run other programs Recall that a process is an instance of a running program. Suppose a process A, which is running program foo, wants to run the program bar. Two-step procedure: –First, process A creates a new process B that is a clone of A »A and B are independent processes running concurrently on the machine. »A is the parent, B is the child. »Each has a unique process id (pid) –Second, process B recognizes that it is a clone, overwrites foo with bar, and transfers control to the first instruction in bar.

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer How programs run other programs Initially, foo is running in process A with process id (pid) of 325. foo Process A pid = 325

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer How programs run other programs Next, program foo running in process A clones a copy of itself. So now we have two identical independent processes (A and B) running the same code. A can wait immediately for B to complete, or do other work in the meantime. foo Process A foo Process B pid = 325 pid = 326

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer How programs run other programs The instance of foo in process B recognizes that it is a clone. Process B foo replaces its code with the code for bar. foo Process A bar Process B pid = 325 pid = 326

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer How programs run other programs pid = fork() –creates a clone of the current process. –returns a 0 to the child process. –returns the positive integer process ID of the child to the parent. exec(objfile) –replaces the current running program with the code in the executable file objfile. –exec never returns to the caller unless there is an error. »e.g., if it can’t locate objfile.

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer How programs run other programs # This is how program foo running in process A # runs program bar in a new process B # the parent executes this statement $child_pid = fork(); # both parent and child run the if statement if ($child_pid == 0) { # Only the child executes this code print “I’m the child\n” exec(bar); # the child only gets to this point if the # exec fails die “can’t exec bar: $!”; } # the parent continues here

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Perl abstractions for fork and exec backquote operator –$output = `foo`; »runs the executable program foo and returns the contents of STDOUT to variable $output. system command –system(“foo”, $arg1, arg2); »runs executable program date. »output goes to wherever STDOUT is currently going (e.g., the screen) –system($prog > mydate.txt”) »redirects output to file mydate.txt

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer How programs pass info to the programs they create Command line arguments –the exec operator can pass a list of ASCII arguments to the program that it run »exec(“foo.pl”, “dave”, “ohallaron”); #!/usr/local/bin/perl5 -w # holds the arguments. # returns the number of array elements # $0 is the name of the perl script (foo.pl) # $ARGV[0] is the first array element (argument) # $ARGV[1] is the second array element (argument) if != 2) { print "usage: $0 first last\n"; exit; } print "arg0 = $ARGV[0]\n"; # dave print "arg1 = $ARGV[1]\n"; # ohallaron

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer How programs pass info to the programs they create Environment variables –Each process maintains a set of “environment variables” »list of ASCII (name,value) pairs. »represent long term conditions or preferences. –A forked process gets an exact duplicate of the parent’s environment variables.

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Unix shell environment variables % printenv PWD=/usr/droh/afs/ TERM=emacs EMACS=t MANPATH=/usr/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/local/apache/man:/usr/X11R6/man PRINTER=iron login_done=1 HOSTNAME=kittyhawk.cmcl.cs.cmu.edu HOSTTYPE=i386_linux3 HOST=kittyhawk.cmcl.cs.cmu.edu SHLVL=2 KRBTKFILE=/tkt/ d-379b6ada PATH=.:/usr/droh/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/apache/bin: /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/etc:/etc: /usr/X11R6/bin USER=droh SHELL=/usr/local/bin/tcsh HOME=/usr/droh

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Accessing environment variables from PERL Environment variables stored in a special hash called “%ENV” # sort and list the environment variables foreach $key(sort keys %ENV) { print “$key=$ENV{$key}\n”; } # add a new (key,value) pair to the environment hash %ENV{“IPADDR”} = “ ”; # delete a (key,value) pair from the environment hash delete $ENV{“IPADDR”};

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content clientserver Client sends request to server. If request URI contains the string “/cgi-bin”, then the server assumes that the request is for dynamic content. GET /cgi-bin/env.pl HTTP/1.1

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content clientserver The server creates a child process and runs the program identified by the URI in that process env.pl fork/exec

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content clientserver The child runs and generates the dynamic content. The server captures the content of the child and forwards it without modification to the client env.pl content

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content clientserver The child terminates. Server waits for the next client request.

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Issues in serving dynamic content How does the client pass program arguments to the server? How does the server pass these arguments to the child? How does the server pass other info relevant to the request to the child? How does the server capture the content produced by the child? These issues are addressed by the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) specification. clientserver content request create env.pl

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Break time! Fish

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Today’s lecture Dynamic content background (35 min) Break (10 min) Serving dynamic content with GET and POST (40 min)

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Issues in serving dynamic content How does the client pass program arguments to the server? How does the server pass these arguments to the child? How does the server pass other info relevant to the request to the child? How does the server capture the content produced by the child? These issues are addressed by the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) specification. clientserver content request create env.pl

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer CGI Because the children are written according to the CGI spec, they are often called CGI programs. –Because many CGI programs are written in Perl, they are often called CGI scripts. However, CGI really defines a simple standard between the client (browser), the server, and the child process.

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer add.com: THE Internet addition service! Ever needed to add two numbers together and you just can’t find your calculator? Try Dr. Dave’s addition service at add.com! –Takes as input your name, and two numbers you want to add together. –Returns their sum in a tasteful personalized message. –After the IPO we’ll expand to multiplication!

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content with GET Question: How does the client pass arguments to the server? Answer: The arguments are appended to the URI Can be encoded directly in a URL typed to a browser or a URL in an HTML link – –add.pl is the program on the server that will do the addition. –argument list starts with “?” –arguments separated by “&” –spaces represented by “+” Can also be generated by an HTML form

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content with GET URL: – Result: Mr. Dave O'Hallaron, Welcome to add.com! The answer is: = 3 Please come again soon! Tell your friends!

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content with GET Question: How does the server pass these arguments to the child? Answer: In environment variable QUERY_STRING –a single string containing everything after the “?” –for add.com: QUERY_STRING = “Dave+O’Hallaron&1&2” # # Child code that parses the add.com arguments # $args = $ENV{QUERY_STRING}; $args =~ s/\+/ /; #replaces + with “ “ ($name, $a1, $a2) = split(/&/, $args);

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content with GET Question: How does the server pass other info relevant to the request to the child? Answer: in a collection of environment variables defined by the CGI spec.

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Some CGI environment variables General –SERVER_SOFTWARE –SERVER_NAME –GATEWAY_INTERFACE (CGI version) Request specific –SERVER_PORT –REQUEST_METHOD (GET, POST, etc) –QUERY_STRING (contains args) –REMOTE_HOST (domain name of client) –REMOTE_ADDR (IP address of client) –CONTENT_TYPE (for POST, type of data in message body, e.g., text/html) –CONTENT_LENGTH (length in bytes)

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Some CGI environment variables In addition, the value of each header of type type received from the client is placed in environment variable HTTP_type –Examples: »HTTP_ACCEPT »HTTP_HOST »HTTP_USER_AGENT (any “-” is changed to “_”)

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content with GET Questions: How does the server capture the content produced by the child? Answer: The child writes its content to stdout. # # server code that runs child and captures stdout # # run the child and put its dynamic content in $child_output $child_output = `add.pl`; # send the child’s dynamic content back to the client $connfd->print($output)

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Putting it all together: The CGI script for GET requests to add.com #!/usr/local/bin/perl5 $args = $ENV{QUERY_STRING}; $args =~ s/\+/ /; ($name, $a1, $a2) = split(/&/, $args); print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"; print " \n"; print " Mr. $name, Welcome to add.com! \n"; print " The answer is: $a1 + $a2 = ", $a1+$a2, " \n"; print " Please come again soon! Tell your friends! \n"; print " \n";

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content with POST More complicated and less general than GET Less frequently used because of the complexity. Only advantage is that it provides arbitrary- length argument lists –older browsers and servers had unnecessary limits on URI lengths in GET requests –doesn’t seem to be a problem anymore

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content with POST Question: How does the client pass arguments to the server? Answer: In the message body of the HTTP request generated by a form. –space converted to “+” –puctuation converted to “%asciihexvalue” »e.g., apostrophe becomes “%27”

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer add.com HTML form (form.html) Name num1 num2

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer HTTP request generated by add.com form POST /cgi-bin/post.pl HTTP/1.1 Accept: */* Referer: Accept-Language: en-us Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows 98) Host: add.com Content-Length: 34 CRLF name=Dave+O%27Hallaron&num1=1&num2=2

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content with POST Questions: How does the server pass the arguments to the child? Answer: Arguments are passed as one line via stdin.

Lecture 9, : The Internet, Summer Serving dynamic content with POST Question: How does the server pass other info relevant to the request to the child? Answer: As with GET, in a collection of environment variables defined by the CGI spec. Question: How does the server capture the content produced by the child? Answer: As with GET, via stdout.